David pulled his hand roughly from her grasp. He pushed past her, and crossed the room. “Mary, you don’t know what you are asking me,” he said in a tone of sharp exasperation. “You don’t know what you are talking about. You don’t seem to realise that you are asking me to become an accessory after the fact in a case of murder.” Mary shuddered. The word was like a blow. She spoke in a hurried whispering way. “But Edward—it’s for Edward. What will happen to Edward? And to me? Don’t you care? We’ve only been married six months. It’s such a little time. Don’t you care at all? I never knew such dreadful things could happen—not to one’s self. You read things in papers, and you never think—you never, never think that a thing like that could happen to yourself. I suppose those people don’t all die, but I should die. Oh, David, aren’t you going to help us?” She spoke the last words as a child might have spoken them. Her eyes were fixed appealingly upon David’s face. Mary Mottisfont had very beautiful eyes. They were hazel in colour, and in shape and expression they resembled those of another Mary, who was also Queen of Hearts. Elizabeth Chantrey became suddenly aware that she was shaking all over, and that the room was full of a thick white mist. She groped in the mist and found a chair. She made a step forward, and sat down. Then the mist grew thinner by degrees, and through it she saw that Mary had come quite close to David again. She was looking up at him. Her hands were against his breast, and she was saying: “David—David—David, you said the world was not enough to give me once.” David’s face was rigid. “You wouldn’t take what I had to give,” he said very low. He had forgotten Elizabeth Chantrey. He saw nothing but Mary’s eyes. “You didn’t want my love, Mary, and now you want my honour. And you say it is only a little thing.” Mary lifted her head and met his eyes. “Give it me,” she said. “If it is a great thing, well, I shall value it all the more. Oh, David, because I ask it. Because I shall love you all my life, and bless you all my life. And if I’m asking you a great thing—oh, David, you said that nothing would be too great to give me. Oh, David, won’t you give me this now? Won’t you give me this one thing, because I ask it?” As Mary spoke the mist cleared from before Elizabeth’s eyes and the numbness that had been upon her changed slowly into feeling. She put both hands to her heart, and held them there. Her heart beat against her hands, and every beat hurt her. She felt again, and what she felt was the sharpest pain that she had ever known, and she had known much pain.